Archery is an ancient art in which many improvements have been made over thousands of years. In recent years, peep sights have been designed to improve the accuracy of aiming the arrow to correct for distance and other factors. Some of these improvements have been directed at improved sighting by alignment of the sight with respect to the archer's head as in U.S. Pat. No. 3,942,507 issued to Opal. U.S. Pat. No. 4,454,857 issued to Miller et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 4,895,129 issued to Hedgpeth are directed to a peep sight adjustable along the bowstring which is unaffected by rotation of the peep sight. The secure mounting of the peep sight in the bowstring is the object of U.S. Pat. No. 4,656,747 issued to Troncoso. Other U.S. Patents of which I am aware which are directed to improved peep sights and sighting devices are:
______________________________________ Inventor(s) U.S. Pat. No. ______________________________________ Stonecipher 3,199,502 Roloff et al. 3,389,695 McLendon 3,410,644 Sofield 3,703,770 Chesnick 3,859,733 Fletcher 4,011,853 Ernstsen 4,860,458 ______________________________________
While all of these disclosures have been directed to various means of improving the sighting of a bow, the importance of the amount of light available in the peep sight has been virtually overlooked. U.S. Pat. No. 3,703,771 issued to Saunders discloses a means to minimize light reflection from the surface of the face of the body surrounding the peep post. The light baffle means comprises a grating which serves as a light diffracting structure. U.S. Pat. No. 4,625,422 issued to Carlson recognizes that additional light is needed in the peep sight and discloses a large central aperture to define a window and an aiming dot secured within the central portion of the window. Neither of these references address the issue of enhancing the available light. Saunders is concerned with light reflection, and the grating substantially reduces the available light because the design of the peep sight has a face which reflects light. Carlson simply enlarges the window. Many of the other cited references actually decrease visibility through the peep sight by virtue of restricting the size of the opening and/or inserting optical lenses in the openings or use of opaque materials for construction of the peep sight. Further, many peep sights are mounted in such a manner that the bowstring strands obstruct the vision of the archer.
Thus, there remains a need to provide a peep sight which is designed for efficient mounting on the bowstring and is fabricated to effectively utilize all the available light to enhance the light so that the archer can use the bow even when a limited amount of light is available.